I’m pleased to present some pictures taken in Beaufort, NC this summer!
Take a picture a day for an entire year. Apparently, this is a thing. Consider it a challenge, a journal, or a journey (I prefer journey). Take a picture a day and post it to your blog. Here are some reasons why you should try it, too.
I’m pleased to present some pictures taken in Beaufort, NC this summer!
Take a picture a day for an entire year. Apparently, this is a thing. Consider it a challenge, a journal, or a journey (I prefer journey). Take a picture a day and post it to your blog. Here are some reasons why you should try it, too.
I’m pleased to present some pictures taken in the garden, around Cottage Home neighborhood, and a few pics from Beaufort, NC! Enjoy!
Take a picture a day for an entire year. Apparently, this is a thing. Consider it a challenge, a journal, or a journey (I prefer journey). Take a picture a day and post it to your blog. Here are some reasons why you should try it, too.
For your viewing pleasure, pictures from around the Cottage Home Neighborhood and Mass Ave. Also, see Addie in her recently refinished Studio Alchemy … and a few other odds and ends.
Take a picture a day for an entire year. Apparently, this is a thing. Consider it a challenge, a journal, or a journey (I prefer journey). Take a picture a day and post it to your blog. Here are some reasons why you should try it, too.
Year 2021. What does it mean to you? To Addie and I, it is full of hope and promise. It is a turning point. The beginning of the end of a pandemic. The end of a volatile presidency and a return to sensible governance. The end of quarantines, isolation, and social distancing and a return to physical human interaction. We will once again congregate, gather with those we love, see them up close, touch and feel again … not in an impersonal virtual space, but in the very real and beautiful world.
The 17th theme for the year is Fire.
Fire tests gold, misfortune brave men.
Seneca, On Providence
Fire!
Serpent Sun
Serpent Sun of the Man of Bronze!
Lift up his shield.
Carry high his spear.
Ignite his courage.
Extinguish his fear.
Breathe fire into his fingers,
fire on his wings,
fire into his eyes,
to scorch the far-flung land.
He’ll rise
over all the savage nations
and fall
on his vainglorious dust—
a bellyful for sleeping vultures
in the corpse-strewn desert
of his vile, forgotten deeds.
We want to celebrate 2021 with an outpouring of creativity and optimism!
We’ve selected 52 themes (one theme per week for the year), and each week for 2021, I will write a poem and Addie will paint a painting inspired by that theme.
This is the sort of big project that artists live for … where we can say what we yearn to say. Big picture stuff. Heart wrenching stuff. Expect surprises, love, and a passion for life.
Check Out Addie’s Instagram Account: www.instagram.com/alchemy.of.art.addie.hirschten/
Check out Addie’s art studio — Studio Alchemy:
studioalchemy.art/
Every month or so, I’ll send a newsletter via e-mail to my subscribers. More often than not, it will contain a list of my new blog posts. You may find something in it that interests you! Or more likely, you’ll be bored to tears and curse my very existence. In either case, you should sign up. You may unsubscribe at any time!
Year 2021. What does it mean to you? To Addie and I, it is full of hope and promise. It is a turning point. The beginning of the end of a pandemic. The end of a volatile presidency and a return to sensible governance. The end of quarantines, isolation, and social distancing and a return to physical human interaction. We will once again congregate, gather with those we love, see them up close, touch and feel again … not in an impersonal virtual space, but in the very real and beautiful world.
The 16th theme for the year is Water.
… the sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness …
Joseph Conrad, The Mirror of the Sea
Waterfall
Diamonds on the Water
My heart sank
in the pitch
alone—
upon my table a bowl
of sorrows and a spoon
made of bone.
I expected no one—
only tears
to consecrate this bitter meal.
And yet you came.
And I cried and cried—
long into the joyless night.
Your heart was heavy for mine
We shared my wretched burden.
Mercifully,
you seized my shoulder,
lifted me up
and through my hovel window shone
first light—
diamonds glittered on the water—
precious gifts where before
there were none.
We want to celebrate 2021 with an outpouring of creativity and optimism!
We’ve selected 52 themes (one theme per week for the year), and each week for 2021, I will write a poem and Addie will paint a painting inspired by that theme.
This is the sort of big project that artists live for … where we can say what we yearn to say. Big picture stuff. Heart wrenching stuff. Expect surprises, love, and a passion for life.
Check Out Addie’s Instagram Account: www.instagram.com/alchemy.of.art.addie.hirschten/
Check out Addie’s art studio — Studio Alchemy:
studioalchemy.art/
Every month or so, I’ll send a newsletter via e-mail to my subscribers. More often than not, it will contain a list of my new blog posts. You may find something in it that interests you! Or more likely, you’ll be bored to tears and curse my very existence. In either case, you should sign up. You may unsubscribe at any time!
Year 2021. What does it mean to you? To Addie and I, it is full of hope and promise. It is a turning point. The beginning of the end of a pandemic. The end of a volatile presidency and a return to sensible governance. The end of quarantines, isolation, and social distancing and a return to physical human interaction. We will once again congregate, gather with those we love, see them up close, touch and feel again … not in an impersonal virtual space, but in the very real and beautiful world.
The 15th theme for the year is Wind.
The road to Manderley lay ahead. There was no moon. The sky above our heads was inky black. But the sky on the horizon was not dark at all. It was shot with crimson, like a splash of blood. And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea.
Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca
Albatross in the Wind
Old Man of the Desert
An old man walks alone, barefoot
on sand that cuts like broken crystal
under a blinding empyrean.
The denizens of his village deride his wandering,
yet he bears no witness to their pale mockery.
His heart is bursting with the empty desert—
its mute measure deafens his ears with love songs.
The East wind lifts him up
(he trusts it as a suckling might of its mother),
and it carries him past the Valley of Kings,
where Pharaohs fearfully sleep,
past the Sacred Lake of Thebes,
and the dust of man’s apotheotic delusions,
to the desert’s dawning edge.
His thirst becomes his compass,
and though his lips are parched
and cracked like bricks of mud
baking under a sweltering, neolithic sun,
he sings—
as a young gypsy girl sings
and dances under the cool, spangled moon,
and tumbles out of the oasis
on a playfully salvational breeze.
We want to celebrate 2021 with an outpouring of creativity and optimism!
We’ve selected 52 themes (one theme per week for the year), and each week for 2021, I will write a poem and Addie will paint a painting inspired by that theme.
This is the sort of big project that artists live for … where we can say what we yearn to say. Big picture stuff. Heart wrenching stuff. Expect surprises, love, and a passion for life.
Check Out Addie’s Instagram Account: www.instagram.com/alchemy.of.art.addie.hirschten/
Check out Addie’s art studio — Studio Alchemy:
studioalchemy.art/
Every month or so, I’ll send a newsletter via e-mail to my subscribers. More often than not, it will contain a list of my new blog posts. You may find something in it that interests you! Or more likely, you’ll be bored to tears and curse my very existence. In either case, you should sign up. You may unsubscribe at any time!
Year 2021. What does it mean to you? To Addie and I, it is full of hope and promise. It is a turning point. The beginning of the end of a pandemic. The end of a volatile presidency and a return to sensible governance. The end of quarantines, isolation, and social distancing and a return to physical human interaction. We will once again congregate, gather with those we love, see them up close, touch and feel again … not in an impersonal virtual space, but in the very real and beautiful world.
The 14th theme for the year is Earth.
And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.
Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
Roots Into The Earth
Wildflowers
A peasant boy gathers wildflowers
for a girl—a ghost of a girl—he once saw,
summers-a lifetime-an aeon ago,
dancing, singing, alone by a creek, fringed by a hot sky
that burned the tall grasses golden.
He imagines her dirty, lily-white feet, stamping, pirouetting,
tra-la-la-ing.
He imagines her toes curling, timidly testing the cool, clear water—
perhaps it is too cold—
but what does it matter when there is so much life and love,
in all this sun and song?
We want to celebrate 2021 with an outpouring of creativity and optimism!
We’ve selected 52 themes (one theme per week for the year), and each week for 2021, I will write a poem and Addie will paint a painting inspired by that theme.
This is the sort of big project that artists live for … where we can say what we yearn to say. Big picture stuff. Heart wrenching stuff. Expect surprises, love, and a passion for life.
Check Out Addie’s Instagram Account: www.instagram.com/alchemy.of.art.addie.hirschten/
Check out Addie’s art studio — Studio Alchemy:
studioalchemy.art/
Every month or so, I’ll send a newsletter via e-mail to my subscribers. More often than not, it will contain a list of my new blog posts. You may find something in it that interests you! Or more likely, you’ll be bored to tears and curse my very existence. In either case, you should sign up. You may unsubscribe at any time!
Year 2021. What does it mean to you? To Addie and I, it is full of hope and promise. It is a turning point. The beginning of the end of a pandemic. The end of a volatile presidency and a return to sensible governance. The end of quarantines, isolation, and social distancing and a return to physical human interaction. We will once again congregate, gather with those we love, see them up close, touch and feel again … not in an impersonal virtual space, but in the very real and beautiful world.
The 13th theme for the year is The Seed.
Though I do not believe
Henry David Thoreau, Faith in a Seed
that a plant will spring up
where no seed has been,
I have great faith in a seed.
Convince me that you have a seed there,
and I am prepared to expect wonders.
The Mustard Seed
Spring (Parts 1 & 2)
A small infant gestates inside the center of the world. From where did she come?
Is she Father? Is she Mother? Is she Sun or Moon?
Does she rise from her own ashes?
To be sure, only paradox is possible.
I saw her first in my mind, before she was real.
I saw her fathoms deep in the dark blue ocean.
She had spread herself thin, a wide willowy finespun web—
a primordium of cells, each compelled but unaware.
I stood alone on the sandy shore, buffeted by the wind,
white cliffs behind me, sheer and imposing.
The sky was black and studded with stars,
and the sea glittered like a treasure chest of diamonds.
So long was that Night
that it showed me Death.
I slept and sometimes wept
to have lost hope to live forever—perhaps not to live but remember.
Even eternal Spring has no memory of all its million flowerings.
After ten thousand nights long,
so long that what ends and begins are no longer one,
the Womb-Sea churned and seethed, and turned itself over and within,
and by Divine Alchemy was transubstantiated
into a garden bed, worlds-wide, soil-rich, blacker than Night,
from which bloomed a Golden Daffodil.
The stem, strong and green, climbed the blue-water sky,
climbed the windblown clouds,
toward the Sun and Moon and the host of celestial fires,
and from its corona, the Earth was born,
and its cliffs of rock and stone,
and its forests, and its birds, and its crush of living things,
breathing and dying,
and its roots, like vines, or sea serpents, crept from the water
to my sandy shore, twisted about my limbs, and lifted me up,
and set me down on its pistil throne.
Did I come before the Daffodil, or it before me?
Did I create it or it me?
Are we two or one?
Is it a question that is its answer?
It’s an answer that is its question.
We want to celebrate 2021 with an outpouring of creativity and optimism!
We’ve selected 52 themes (one theme per week for the year), and each week for 2021, I will write a poem and Addie will paint a painting inspired by that theme.
This is the sort of big project that artists live for … where we can say what we yearn to say. Big picture stuff. Heart wrenching stuff. Expect surprises, love, and a passion for life.
Check Out Addie’s Instagram Account: www.instagram.com/alchemy.of.art.addie.hirschten/
Check out Addie’s art studio — Studio Alchemy:
studioalchemy.art/
Every month or so, I’ll send a newsletter via e-mail to my subscribers. More often than not, it will contain a list of my new blog posts. You may find something in it that interests you! Or more likely, you’ll be bored to tears and curse my very existence. In either case, you should sign up. You may unsubscribe at any time!
Year 2021. What does it mean to you? To Addie and I, it is full of hope and promise. It is a turning point. The beginning of the end of a pandemic. The end of a volatile presidency and a return to sensible governance. The end of quarantines, isolation, and social distancing and a return to physical human interaction. We will once again congregate, gather with those we love, see them up close, touch and feel again … not in an impersonal virtual space, but in the very real and beautiful world.
The 12th theme for the year is Spring.
The Sun — just touched the Morning —
Emily Dickinson, 232
The Morning — Happy thing —
Supposed that He had come to dwell —
And Life would all be Spring!
Out of Darkness Comes Spring
Spring (Part 1)
A small infant gestates inside the center of the world. From where did she come?
Is she Father? Is she Mother? Is she Sun or Moon?
Does she rise from her own ashes?
To be sure, only paradox is possible.
I saw her first in my mind, before she was real.
I saw her fathoms deep in the dark blue ocean.
She had spread herself thin, a wide willowy finespun web—
a primordium of cells, each compelled but unaware.
I stood alone on the sandy shore, buffeted by the wind,
white cliffs behind me, sheer and imposing.
The sky was black and studded with stars,
and the sea glittered like a treasure chest of diamonds.
So long was that Night
that it showed me Death.
I slept and sometimes wept
to have lost hope to live forever—perhaps not to live but remember.
Even eternal Spring has no memory of all its million flowerings.
We want to celebrate 2021 with an outpouring of creativity and optimism!
We’ve selected 52 themes (one theme per week for the year), and each week for 2021, I will write a poem and Addie will paint a painting inspired by that theme.
This is the sort of big project that artists live for … where we can say what we yearn to say. Big picture stuff. Heart wrenching stuff. Expect surprises, love, and a passion for life.
Check Out Addie’s Instagram Account: www.instagram.com/alchemy.of.art.addie.hirschten/
Check out Addie’s art studio — Studio Alchemy:
studioalchemy.art/
Every month or so, I’ll send a newsletter via e-mail to my subscribers. More often than not, it will contain a list of my new blog posts. You may find something in it that interests you! Or more likely, you’ll be bored to tears and curse my very existence. In either case, you should sign up. You may unsubscribe at any time!